justification

As I read the hard paper this morning, a relic of sorts that somehow landed on my doorstep, I recall a time when I was more interested in the Plural than the Singular; the Collective, the Society, the State. But now my universe seems to exist on an entirely different level. The micro level.

But then, isn't everything micro? Isn't the micro the main ingredient, the flour of the macro? I think it's interesting when we speak of social constructs without any seeming awareness that these things are made up of individuals, ones with impulses that drive their behavior.

I suppose I'm interested in psychology then, more than sociology, and even less interested in political theory, which examines the behavior of states as if they were living, breathing things entirely devoid of living breathing things! But they're there, and they eat, and fuck, and desire, and envy, and lust, and harbor delusions of grandeur, and with all these at stake, they act. So for now I'm focusing on that, and it's comforting to know that to zoom back out, all I have to do is twist the lens.

mean

Is there anything so cozy as staying in of doors in snowy madness with wine and food and chocolate. Life is about balance, yes, but for now I'd like more of this.

Soothe.

Life's been tough lately. Being home for the holiday compounds it. I've made mistakes. I've gotten hurt. I've walked into a chandelier, into many chandeliers. I've added injury to insult, insult to injury, mixed and repeated.

Sometimes I think to myself, look outside yourself and your little life. Look how lucky you are. But realistically that only gets you so far. And you end up feeling helpless and thus worse.

I've been having a great time in my new life in Iowa City. It is quaint, it is friendly, I am productive, I am, for the most part, happy. But accidents continue to happen--I think I have a sign on my head, underneath this bump, that says "Danger Welcome". I fall down, but I pick myself up, my friends pick me up, writing, it picks me up.

But then a rapid succession of punches comes, and I'm down for ten seconds and it's a Technical Knock Out. I can't get up. The bump hurts. Everything hurts. And I made the mistake, texted while walking, ignored the warnings, didnt' heed advice, so it's that much more painful.

Darkness. Looking up and seeing light very far away. It's dramatic but right now it's reality and I'm having a hard time escaping it. Which reminds me of something a poet recently told me: "You have to make your own escape."

I never understood it when people asked to be "saved from themselves." It sounds romantic but weird and abstract. But now I get it. To be saved from oneself is to be rescued from one's habits and addictions and recurring thoughts and fears. But like the poet says, no one can swoop in and do that for you. And I wish someone could. Instead here I am, trying to save myself.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. The bump hurts, resonates, tugs, somehow, at my heart. I am not supposed to be the girl sitting on the floor with a bump on her forehead. That couldn't be me. Not the me in my delusions of grandeur, not the me in the home videos, not the me, even, on my Facebook profile. I don't know who that is, though I want to. I want not to ache, not to cry, not to be in this hole.

It's dark now. But I'll go to sleep and morning will come, and I will brew coffee and at the first sip I will feel better. I will feel that little thing called hope, a sliver of excitement, of prospect, of healing, of home. And I will take another sip, and keep hoping.

Until then, I need to ice my wound.

visitor

she stared up at the ceiling as water soaked her hair and saw a spider inching towards the shower. "go away, bad spider!" she yelled, and splashed water at it until it scurried off. she dried off and went to the sink, where the spider was now hovering. she looked up and decided it had won this round.

next

He sat at the on-campus clinic waiting to be seen by med students. He knew he loved to save time, thrived on it, got off on it, so why he chose the campus clinic over the remote location was a mystery to him. He had a car, he could've easily driven there. Been in and out in fifteen minutes. Instead he was here, surrounded by sweat-panted, Ugg-booted, undergrads. He wonders if he did this on purpose. Waiting in a doctor's office is a great excuse to be away from one's computer. It's a great place to read a book. Maybe that was the only time he could read one--not in bed, or in his living room, but in between.

discovery

in lyric essay, i have opened a, forgive the cliches, pandora's box, a can of worms, a box of sand that i'll gladly climb into. what is this fascinating form, it's such a mind-fuck but yet a mountain i can't but want to climb. no doubt i will hate it at times, but i won't give up on it.

little darling

the rain has provided me with a sort of solace. this essay i am working on i write in spurts, and in between i jump up from my chair to play on the jungle gym outside. you make no sense to me, but last weekend you kept me from being lonely.

remedy

somehow, every other saturday i get depressed. i fear that soon, it will be every saturday. i hope not.

word of the day: tempestuous

adjective
1.
characterized by or subject to tempests: the tempestuous ocean.
2.
of the nature of or resembling a tempest: a tempestuous wind.
3.
tumultuous; turbulent: a tempestuous period in history.

Of course

Life becomes a hell of a lot less stressful when I accept mediocrity.

What a waste of time, energy, potential happiness, to strive for anything more!

Aftermath.

The first lecture panel...it went OK. Of course there were typos--The Karamazov Brothers instead of The Brothers Karamazov, for example, which killed me. The first lecture was boring, the second emotional, the third just a tad too long, the fourth riddled with bad words, which no one told me were not OK. So still good that I dressed well for the all-eyes-on-me moments. I'm glad, though, that it's over, and nervous about the next one, as the expectations are now higher.

Silly me. I thought I was here to write!

First.

Today is the first of the Iowa City Public Library Lecture Series, which I'm in charge of orchestrating. Today's topic is Translating and Writing Across Languages. My boss told me that if anything goes wrong, all eyes will turn to me. Pressure, anyone?

It's stressful to have this job while I'm doing my MFA--babysitting and meeting with and editing the ramblings of 38 writers from all over the world--but a nice excuse not to write and a little respite from solitude. So for now I try and make the best of it, and hope that nothing goes wrong. And if it does, and all eyes turn to me, I'll at least be dressed for the occasion.

Passage.

I can't believe how much time I wasted--working office jobs, doing things I didn't want to do, being a masochist more generally--when I could have been ostensibly writing. Why all that suffering, really? To what end, for what purpose? Surely not money, as I made just enough to get by and keep doing the shit I was doing. I feel so behind, so at a loss, so threatened by the passage of time because I've wasted so much of it. I see these 22 and 23 year olds, straight out of college, doing MFAs alongside of me, and I think, fuck, they are so much smarter than I am. They went straight for what they wanted, while I went for character-building experiences in which I consistently placed myself in challenging and uncomfortable situations. I could've been sitting in a cozy, familiar room, writing. Why oh why oh why do I always take the more difficult road? What does character-building mean, anyway? It means I've suffered, seen the world, seen parts of myself that I frankly wish I'd never seen.

And yet I wouldn't take back a single experience. Not one, really. OK, maybe the last office job I had. Though it took that one to bring me here. It took severe disgust and fear of "this is it, forever and ever?" to make me apply to go back to school less than 6 months after graduating. So who the hell knows whether it's ever a waste or exactly as much time as it takes.

1.

I wonder, sometimes, about loneliness. Why it seems to sneak up. Why you can be having a wonderful time with yourself, and then suddenly feel very alone. I am glad to experience it, as I reminder that I need.

Paradox of Choice.

Writing is a series of decisions. What to include. What to leave out. Where to begin. Where to end. What to expand on. What to condense.

I hate decisions. This is why writing is difficult.

Revived.

Iowa City's where I've been since Thursday August 12th. I came here by plane, with two suitcases, a back pack, a purse, and a small carry-on rolly bag. I took a shuttle to my apartment, and on the way learned that while Iowa City and Cedar Rapids had experienced heavy flooding this summer, Des Moines "got it in the pants." I overtipped the driver (I know this because when I gave him ten dollars he said, "wow, geez, gosh, thanks!") and then I got out and he helped me carry my bags to the doorstep. I typed my code into the front door keypad, retrieved my key from my open mailbox, and unlocked the door to the most high-ceilinged light-filled hardwood-floored empty apartment that I've ever been able to call my own. I laid out my sleeping bag and went to Target on a bus. I bought a shower curtain and a pillow and a window fan. I got drunk that night on gin--too drunk--and woke up sweaty and hungover and nauseous and depressed. I continued to sweat and dry heave until a fellow first year nonfiction student drove me to Walmart in search of a window AC unit. They were sold out. We went to Lowe's. They, too, were sold out. He took over and called around until we found a place--K-Mart--that had four left. "Tell them to put it on layaway--we'll be there in 15 minutes!" We drove and it poured. I ran into the store, to the back, retrieved my AC unit and paid $250 for it. We waited for it to stop raining before unloading it from the backseat.

I came to Iowa, as I said, by plane, without a car. The plan was to have mine shipped here for fear that it wouldn't make the drive. "It'll take at least three days!" Said my dad. "What if you break down in between Ohio and Indiana? You'll be in deep shit." So we made a reservation for the car to be picked up, only, it never was. Apparently car transport companies can't guarantee that the car will ever be picked up. So it sat in my dad's driveway for a week until he called the shippers, yelled and canceled the order, then drove it here himself. But the previous Sunday, I decided to rent a car. My friend Jen drove me to the airport to pick it up. I spent the week triangulating between Walmart, Target, and various consignment shops in search of furniture. At Walmart I watched an infant fall from a shopping cart. I peered around the corner to see what happened, and his mother, who was scraping him off the ground, shot me a look that said "Don't tell anyone!" Later in the week I overhead an incoming freshman tell her mother that several girls on her floor spoke Spanish. "Wow, well, you might as well have moved to Spain!"

Last Monday I also began my research assistantship at a place called the International Writing Program. On my first day I was asked to read Arabic poetry and fiction written by high school students and check for errors. Third day it was translating English to French. I am not trained in translation. This week I'm writing a grant proposal. I've never written one. Did I say I knew how to do these things during my interview? I can't remember. Tuesday I went to a steak dinner at my neighbor and friend Amy's apartment, and it was intimate and warm and I felt happy.

Once the Butterflies Have Settled

My recent essay about living and loving in New York, published in The Huffington Post:

Once the Butterflies Have Settled